The Importance Of Opening Holiday Cards In Black Boy By Richard Wright

Opening holiday cards is meant to be a happy thing. You are able to see what others have been up to and be happy for them while reflecting on your own year. It was late December and my parents and I were sitting at the kitchen table. They were opening the mail, some of which were holiday cards. My father opens one and remarks to my mother, “That’s interesting.” My mother then takes the card and says something along the lines of “sure.” I have always been a nosy person and asked my father, “What? What is it?” He then takes the card back from my mother and hands it to me. I am instantly confused; I don’t see anything interesting about it and tell him so. He then proceeds to tell me to look at the picture on the front and I still don’t see it.

He hates when others treat him differently or talk down on him and he won’t accept it. At a very young age, his mother once refused to let him back into the house unless he defended himself and bought groceries for them. She was the one who taught him to stand up for himself. In his childhood, Wright’s family isolated him and didn’t treat him the same due to his religious views. They were very devout and religious Catholic Christians, while he wasn’t religious and didn’t really believe in God. He fought back using words and a few times he even held his own with a knife and physically fought. Then, when he was attempting to secure a job, his employers talked down to him, thought of him as inferior, and were racist towards him. Unfortunately, he could only oppose them so much because his employers were white and he was a black boy living in the South during the 1920s. In the end, Wight moved North, and although it appears as though he was running away, there wasn’t much else he could

Even though it wasn’t because of his race, he was still given a hard time because of the way he thought. To other Party members, he was a radical, bringing ideas that while still holding the Party views, were different from their own. He wished to increase the diversity of the Party and make its message more accessible and easier to understand for the general public. As people opposed him he continued to fight for his beliefs. Wright went to most of the meetings that he could and argued his case, pleading with others. In the end, it didn’t work out and he left the Communist Party, but the important thing is that he stood up for